Do you agree with the following five observations? If so, the time is right for evaluation professionals to align. By 'align' I do not mean coordination or doing away with healthy competition. I refer to sharing some broad goals as evaluation professionals who wish to contribute to the
"We won't get back to normal because normal was the problem." - Graffiti in Santiago, Chile It is great to see evaluators leaping into action with advice on how to adjust practice to cope with the impact of the coronavirus. This could be a transformative moment also
In my view elevator speeches that present evaluation as something done for "learning", "improving", "generating knowledge" or "being accountable" belong to the past. COVID-19 is part of humanity's footprint on Earth, part of the Anthropocene. It is going to
We are at a transformative moment in the history of humankind and of our planet. During this extraordinary time and beyond, the global evaluation community will have to hone and reposition evaluation, in close alignment with research, as a GPS that can help humanity navigate the complex, uncharted terrain that
Experience of failure is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, one can hide it, blame it on others or just ignore it. On the other hand, it could be transformed into an incredible learning opportunity provided that it is studied, its underlying causes are identified, and more importantly,
As one of three facilitators at a recent 3-day workshop organised in Connecticut by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA) on 'Assessing Systems Change', I shared the following tips to inspire evaluation professionals to start integrating (complex) systems thinking into their practice. Many already do this without even realising
One thing is certain: the proficiencies and abilities that will help us deal with the world in an era defined by the Anthropocene, the SDGs and the Fourth Industrial Revolution are quite different from those of past decades. There are many similarities between the competency frameworks that the experts in
Skill 6. Deep Generalists In order to be a good evaluation professional, it is essential to see connections. We have to be able to analyse, integrate and synthesise - what we know from past research and evaluation literature, what we derive from different sources and methods used during the evaluation, and
"Are modernity's blueprints for evaluation theory and practice exhausted?" Only now and again one finds provocative questions and insights during an evaluation conference keynote. A keynote that is Innovative. Thought-provoking. Visionary. In 2018, renowned evaluation scholar Thomas Schwandt delivered one of these rare speeches at
Umberto Eco, in the opening pages to his book The Infinity of Lists provides evaluators with a ticklish challenge: stability supports the definitions of a finite form of list, while instability requires a reforming of an idea with the recognition that the list of its attributes is likely to contain
